Blog

More on 'Let them eat carbon'

25 Aug 2011, 16:42

Robin Webster

Last week we wrote two blogs concerning claims about energy
bills made in the Daily Mail. Both of the figures quoted in the
Daily Mail were sourced to a new book by the Taxpayers Alliance,
entitled 'Let
them eat carbon'. The two claims made were:

1. That '
green taxes' are costing families £500 a year (see the blog
we posted on this point)

Matthew Sinclair, the author of the TPA book, responded to both
pieces,
here and
here, repeating the first point, and defending the second, and
suggesting that we've got our analysis wrong.

Arguments about these sorts of numbers get complex quickly, so
I'll try to keep it as jargon-free as possible.

£500 a year?

The first claim to deal with is that families are being charged
an "extra" £500 a year as a result of green taxes. To calculate
this figure the TPA compared
a measure called the 'Social Cost of Carbon' with an estimate of
the total figure for domestic green taxes in the UK. (For a more
detailed explanation see our previous
blog).

The Social Cost of Carbon is an estimate of the economic impacts
of climate change, which the government has in the past used to
inform policymaking. Not surprisingly, such a figure is difficult
to calculate, and there are varying estimates of what it should be.
For example, how do you quantify in cost terms the risks of a
collapse in food supplies, or of 30-40% of the world's species
being at risk of extinction, or of unpredictable extreme weather
events around the world?

There are differing economic approaches, but the difficulty of
doing so with confidence is such that DECC and Defra,
following advice from a variety of experts (
not just economist Paul Ekins as Sinclair suggests) stopped
using it, adopting a different approach in 2009, which instead
tries to identify the most cost-efficient policies for meeting
pre-existing emissions targets.

In defending the use of the social cost of carbon in his
analysis, Sinclair
writes that this current methodology used by Government is
equivalent to "writ[ing] a blank cheque" and that

"...the problem with it is that there are lots of unlikely,
unquantifiable and potentially catastrophic risks. It would
be wrong and utterly impractical to base major economic policies on
them..given that the overwhelming majority of the harms expected
from climate change - particularly in high estimates of the
cost of climate change like the Stern Review - affect people living
some time in the future and much more prosperous than we are today,
it is hard to make that an argument for implementing radical and
expensive climate change policy now."

Sinclair believes that setting an economic value on the
potential impacts of climate change is necessary in order to
prevent society writing a "blank cheque" for measures to tackle it.
It's a superficially compelling argument. But Sinclair's argument
gives the impression that major negative impacts on our society
caused by climate change are unlikely and unquantifiable (though
possible). But that isn't what the scientific evidence suggests. As
we have detailed before, the latest
figures show that on current trends we are on track for a four
degrees temperature rise by the end of the century, about which
one recent paper concluded:

"…the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in
many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for
natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.
Hence, the ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend
would not be preserved."

The difficulties in putting an economic value or cost on this
outcome are obvious. (For more detail, see here.)

It's because of issues like this that Social Cost of Carbon has
been abandoned by policymakers.

But let's go with the methodology for the purposes of examining
the £500 figure. Because he's comparing the social cost of
carbon with the green tax burden, the higher the social cost of
carbon used in the calculation, the weaker Sinclair's argument.

He argues that the figure he uses for the Social Cost of Carbon
is relatively high, as you might expect. But the Stern Review into
the social cost of carbon - for example - used a much higher
figure. Sinclair responds: "surely we shouldn't just be looking at
one study? We should take the IPCC approach and look across the
academic literature."

In fact, the Stern Review was exactly such a survey of the
available literature in 2006 - including work produced by economist
Richard Tol, whom Sinclair bases his argument on. As the Stern
Review states (p.322):

"The academic literature provides a wide range of estimates of
the social cost of carbon, spanning three orders of magnitude, from
less than £0/tC to over £1000/tC".

The figure used by Stern based on a review of the academic
literature, is $85 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. This, Stern argued,
"makes some allowances for catastrophe risk and non-market costs" -
(economist speak for things like the value of human lives and
ecosystems) - but was "well below the upper end of the range (by a
factor of about four or five)."

The TPA's lower figure is an old number, known as the Shadow
Price of Carbon, which Defra used in the past for policy appraisal.
But, like DECC, Defra
abandoned the methodology because of inherent uncertainties.
The TPA analysis relies on a lower, and narrower assessment of the
social cost of carbon to get the £500 figure.

Costing households £115 a year

Onto the second claim. Last Wednesday the Daily Mail claimed
that "'
EU emissions directives alone'" are costing households up to
£115 a year. We pointed
out that these figures are approximately three times those
calculated by DECC and Ofgem for the impact of the ETS and the RO
on domestic electricity bill, which seems worth mentioning.

"The Daily Mail quoted the cost to consumers, not the
contribution to domestic electricity bills. Residential,
industrial and commercial consumers of energy are all affected by
these regulations. "

The essence of his point is that, whilst
households account for only 36 percent of electricity bills,
consumers also pay the costs of the ETS for industry, because these
costs are passed down the chain. So if a consumer buys a car, the
costs of the ETS will be passed from the owners of the power plant
to the steel producer to the car manufacturer, and ultimately to
the consumer.

This is a reasonable point - although to know what the actual
impact on consumers was you need to answer questions about what
proportion of the ETS costs to industry are passed on. Whether the
TPA's numbers on the ETS and the RO actually stack up is an
interesting (but involved) question that we will return to next
week.

However, it seems equally reasonable to conclude from the Mail
piece that they mangled this argument, suggesting that the ETS
costs were came through household electricity bills,
claiming:

"Households paid up to £115 each last
year to fund EU green policies, according to research. Taxpayers
meet the £3billion bill through 'stealth taxes'on household
electricity bills passed on by energy companies, a book
claims.

Matthew Sinclair, author of Let Them Eat Carbon, said 'Regulations
meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions are adding to energy bills,
making it harder to for people to make ends meet. It's vital that
we scrap them'." [our italics]

The impression given here is that 'stealth taxes' are adding £3
billion (or £115 per household) to domestic electricity bills. This
of course fits in with the Mail's campaign against 'green taxes' in
energy bills, but, as Sinclair has subsequently pointed out, it
doesn't fit with the TPA's research.

One final point - in his response to us, Sinclair expresses the
hope that we will "continue the debate about green taxes". There is
undoubtedly a valid debate to be had about the impact of Government
measures aimed at encouraging a switch to a low-carbon economy. Are
we are using the most efficient policy mechanisms? Will they drive
the change the government wants, and will this be a sufficient
response to the changing climate? How will different sectors of the
economy respond, and what should the Government be doing with the
revenues from 'green' taxes?

These are important questions. Answering them intelligently can
only happen in the context of an accurate understanding of the
relevant figures (and where those figures come from), and of the
potential impacts of climate change.